


belief

by fairytalefix



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-04
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-24 17:35:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4928845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairytalefix/pseuds/fairytalefix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short fic I had to get out of my head after the 5x02 promos.  How Emma came to cast the S5 curse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	belief

“You need a Savior to defeat the Dark One’s curse,” Merlin says, and Regina scoffs.

“The Savior is the Dark One,” she points out, “or is the blatantly obvious outside the purview of your crystal ball?” Maybe she’s being a bit too scathing, a bit too dismissive, but as of last night she has a damn good reason to want the extraneous darkness out of Emma post haste. Preferably yesterday.

She feels Emma’s magic buzz at her side before she feels Emma’s fingers slide around her palm. “Hey,” Emma says softly in that way that’s meant to calm her. “What about you?”

“Yeah!” Henry says, and he’s oddly cheery given that they’ve just established that there’s no way to rid his other mother of her murderous alter ego. “Mom, you can totally be the Savior.”

She blanches and automatically takes a step away from the two of them. “Excuse me?” But their faces are inwardly lit and so, so trusting, and Henry’s belief radiates off of him in waves nearly tangible—but seriously? “Tell me you’re joking.”

“Of course not,” Emma says, and squeezes her hand. “I did it.”

“You didn’t have a choice,” Regina says.

“Do you?” Emma says. Her eyes are rimmed in red and desperation wars with hope in her eyes. “It’s the only way to stop me, Regina.” She licks her lips, looks down. “I can’t do it myself,” she says and the profundity of that admission hits Regina square in the chest. “I need help. I need your help. The light to this darkness.” A laugh burbles from her and she swipes at her eyes with her free hand. “It’s like we flipped, huh? Makes sense, I guess. The Savior and the–” She stops. She can’t say it.

“The formerly Evil Queen?” Regina supplies, and Emma nods. Regina sighs. “You know I don’t know the first thing about being the Savior.”

“You know more than you think, Mom,” Henry tells her. “You protect the people you love.” 

Regina and Emma both inhale sharply at his use of the word love, and their synchronicity would be funny if the situation weren’t so dire. They hadn’t said love last night, though other words–other, safer words—had been used. 

I care about you.  
I don’t want anything to happen to you.  
I don’t want to lose whatever it is that we have.  
I will protect you.  
I don’t want to hurt you.  
I want you to be happy.  
I’m sorry.  
We’ll find a way out of this.  
I promise.

“You don’t let anything stand in your way, Mom,” Henry continues. “You do the right thing now.”

Whatever the “right thing” is. She’s not sure she knows anymore. Or ever has.

“Even if that right thing is destroying me,” Emma says softly.

“That won’t happen,” Henry says firmly. 

“It may come to that,” Merlin tells them.

All three whirl to face him with matching looks of disdain. 

“It’s your fault we’re in this mess to begin with,” Regina says. “As far as I’m concerned, all of the death and ruin that has ever come of the Dark One’s curse, that’s all on you. So I suggest you sit down and let those of us who do not cower in fear of the monsters in our closets handle this monstrosity that you have created because you were afraid of the Bogeyman.”

Emma and Henry are wearing matching smirks when she turns back to them.

“Totally Savior material,” Emma says.

“Oh yeah,” Henry agrees.

Regina rolls her eyes and draws a deep breath. “You’ll have to go completely dark,” she says to Emma, unable to help her disappointment. This was the outcome they had struggled to avoid, and also the outcome that is appearing more and more inevitable.

Emma just nods. “Yeah,” she says. “Karmic payback for having the darkness sucked out of me as a baby.” Regina begins to form a retort, but Emma’s hand comes to her shoulder and the tips of three fingers slide just under the neckline of Regina’s dress. “You need to make sure I don’t hurt anyone.”

Regina nods, she can only nod. She feels weighted and heavy with the burden—no. Not the burden. She would do whatever necessary to reclaim Emma from the Dark One’s curse, so that can’t be the weight. Emma presses her fingertips into the flesh of Regina’s shoulder–lightly, yes, but that touch is profound of purpose and catches Regina’s breath in her chest.

I trust you, she’s saying. Out of everyone here, I trust you.  
I trust you to lead them, I trust you to listen,  
I trust your decisions,  
and I trust you to pull me out,  
and if that is not possible,  
I trust you to destroy me.

It is their faith that weighs so heavily, not the task. The task of extricating Emma from the curse she would assume regardless, and she would do whatever was necessary in order to see it accomplished.

But being entrusted with the task is something different entirely.

“It would probably be best if we don’t remember this,” Henry says suddenly. “Any of this. Like, nothing that happened in Camelot.”

“How would that be better?” Regina asks, already knowing the answer to her question, but still trading hesitant glances with Emma. She doesn’t want to forget last night. She doesn’t want to forget anything about last night. But she does want to forget this weight that makes movement difficult and her thoughts unwieldy. 

Henry’s shoulders arch to his ears and his eyes flare wide as they do when his gut instincts kicks in. “Well, if we remember what happened, this conversation in particular, we’ll know the plan. We’ll know why Emma went full on Dark One and we’ll be, I dunno, maybe too confident to get her back.”

Too confident, Regina muses. Not a chance.

“He has a point,” Emma concedes. “It is better if you forget all of this. I’ll curse you. I’ll keep my memories. One of us has to know what’s going on.”

Regina’s eyebrow arches. “And you think the Dark One is the best one to know the plan?”

“It’ll give me something to hold on to,” Emma says softly. “The Darkness…” She licks her lips and rejoins their hands. “It’s big, Regina. Bigger than anything we’ve faced before. It feels like my only option is to kill and destroy and—and just tear everything apart.” She takes a deep breath, her jaw tight. “I need something to get me through this—so I can get back in one piece. More or less.”

“But I won’t know that I’m supposed to be—” The Savior. She can’t even say it. 

But Emma smiles and it’s comforting even though her smiles don’t reach her eyes anymore. “Pretty sure I can make you remember. I’ll push you. I’ll give you everything you need in order to, well.” That lopsided smile again. “To be what you are.”

Her skin burns where Emma has touched her. Her lips still tingle from last night’s moonlit kisses. Her heart aches because she’s tired of impossible tasks, she’s tired of redemption, and she’s tired of the darkness threatening to steal away the people she loves. 

So she lies to herself. She lies to herself and tells herself that this is the last task, the climactic quest at the end of the hero’s journey. She promises herself that Emma will return and they will be happy, if not ever after, then at least for awhile. She’d settle for happily for awhile and without the threat of the Dark One or misplaced darkness looming over them, maybe she’d even be able to enjoy it.

Still, the plan is not without its danger. “If I can’t–” she begins,

but lips press against her lips and a body presses against her body and arms wrap her waist and she’s pretty sure she hears Henry say, “I knew it,” very, very quietly. The hard edges of can’t and impossible don’t seem so threatening with Emma pressed against her, but

she won’t remember this. This, this little fragment of quiet and calm, this place of peace, this she won’t remember. 

“I’ll know,” Emma whispers, her temple resting against Regina’s. “I’ll remember. I can remember for both of us.” She pulls away just far enough to look into Regina’s eyes. “Trust me.”

Emma’s eyes are sparking, are alive, for the first time since coming to Camelot, and Regina understands that the woman in her arms now is fully Emma Swan. The curse is there, but distant, dispersed into background noise in the light of—whatever it is that they have. That gives her hope; that their bond helps Emma shake the stranglehold of the curse. She feels that hope swell in her chest, warm her cheeks, and believes for a moment that they—all of them together—can defeat this beast.

“I do,” Regina says. “I do trust you.” She looks around Emma to Henry. “I’m going to need your help to trust myself.”

Henry grins. “You got it.”

“Do you hear yourselves?” Merlin’s voice is high pitched and mocking, a clear counterpoint to their cultivated hope. He walks towards them, cape swishing, back bent, eyes like a serpent’s. “I couldn’t defeat the darkness. Me, _Merlin_.” His disdain of Regina is palpable, and when Emma moves towards him, her hand clawed, Regina stops her. 

“You’ve never experienced the darkness, have you?” she asks, already knowing the answer.

“Never,” he spits. “I dedicated myself to the light as a boy after seeing the damage wrought by those who wielded dark magic.”

“Exactly,” Regina says. “You were afraid of it, and the darkness used that fear against you. Your fear was your weakness, and your fear let the darkness loose without the presence of light magic to temper it. You wanted a pure magic, unsullied by what you thought was evil, so you pushed all of the darkness into the dagger and rent it from Excalibur.” She’s fuming now, undone by this man’s extreme arrogance and stupidity. “You are an imbecile. Your fear of the darkness made the darkness nearly unstoppable because fear is what feeds it. Fear and anger. Hatred and conceit. You had those in abundance.” She shakes her head in disgust, her lip curling. “And you call yourself a Master of the Light. Idiot.” She straightens herself up, feels a buoyancy in her chest. “I’m not afraid of dark magic. I respect it. I know it. I lived it, and I can still use it. I can use light magic, too.” She swallows a sigh and realizes that, “Maybe I am the only one who can stop this.”

“You’re the only one with both kinds of magic now,” Henry says. “That—that means something.”

Emma’s at her side again, her breathing quick, unsteady. Her eyes are dark, her skin ashen, her hands shaking. Regina chides herself. The Dark One thrives on animosity and discontent, and she just provided it a feast.

“Can both of you give us a minute alone?” she asks, wrapping an arm around Emma’s waist and holding her upright.

Henry immediately nods. “I love you guys,” he says before he trots out the door and down the hallway.

Merlin sputters a protest. “This is my study!”

“I don’t care if it’s your bedroom,” Regina spits back. “She’s fighting against the Dark One, so unless you want to go head to head with your nemesis, I suggest you leave. _Now_.”

Merlin shuts up and makes his way to the door with affected, measured steps. With an arch of an eyebrow, he shuts the wooden doors behind him.

“Thank god,” Regina sighs as soon as the doors are closed. She turns to Emma, but all of this between them is new and tender, and she’s not sure how to act or what to say. But she cares, god, she cares. She slides her hand along Emma’s cheek, and says, “Look at me, Emma.”

Emma does. She looks up at Regina, and her eyes aren’t so dark anymore, but there’s still a lingering sort of sickness about her. The impression of something foreign, something distinctly not-Emma. 

But Regina smiles when Emma looks at her, says, “Come back to me,” and, “It’s all right,” and, “Listen to my voice, forget about him.” And Emma’s head finds its way to the crook of Regina’s shoulder and Regina eases them down to the floor, whispering the whole time about the picnics they’ll go on, the seaside walks they’ll take, the dinners and holidays and mornings they’ll share, the time that they will have together once this final task is done.

Because this final task must be completed and the Savior must rise as the Dark One ascends if either of them are going to find each other again.

“We’re connected. We always have been,” Emma mutters as she leans down and rests her head in Regina’s lap. Her hand stretches out and she traces an image only she can see in the air in front of her. “I see it now. Regina, I see it. It’s always been you and me. We’re the only ones who can—we have to–”

“Shhh,” Regina whispers, running her fingers through Emma’s hair over and over again. “We will.” She commits this moment to the memory she’s certain to lose. The weight of Emma’s head in her lap. The scent of the violet water on Emma’s skin. Emma’s hair like flax through her fingers. It’s important that Emma remembers.

_I care about you._  
_I don’t want anything to happen to you._  
_I don’t want to lose whatever it is that we have._

“I’ll come back,” Emma says, her voice distant and childlike. “I will.”

“I know,” Regina assures her, running the back of her fingers along Emma’s cheek. “I know you will.”

_I will protect you._  
_I don’t want to hurt you._  
_I want you to be happy._

“You’ll be the Savior, and everything will be fine,” Emma says.

And Regina wants to agree, wants to say, ‘I will,’ but the words get tangled up and caught in her throat and she cannot speak. She reaches out and takes Emma’s hand still suspended in the air, and presses Emma’s fingers to her lips. 

_I’m sorry._

“You will, Regina,” Emma says. “I see it. You will.”

_We’ll find a way out of this._  
_I promise._

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on my Tumblr @ fairytalefix. Thanks for reading!


End file.
